HONG KONG (LifeSiteNews) — Joseph Cardinal Zen has issued fresh criticism of Fiducia Supplicans, stating that any description of a homosexual relationship as “good” is a “heresy.”
“The whole thing is really a confusion,” said Cardinal Zen, speaking to EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on February 1.
He questioned the rationale of Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández and Pope Francis – who authored and approved Fiducia Supplicans, respectively – saying that while they wrote about avoiding confusion, “they said many things which only [furthered] the confusion.”
READ: Pope Francis publishes norms for clergy to ‘bless’ homosexual couples
Referencing Fernández’s January 4 defense of Fiducia Supplicans, Zen suggested that the second text “seemed to be in some way a detraction of what he said in the first declaration, and he seemed to understand there is a confusion in the Church.”
Zen added that perhaps worse than the confusion was the fact that “there are people who are waiting to have an opportunity to make confusion. People both in the Church and the people of the media.”
But the cardinal’s strongest criticism was levied at the text’s wording regarding homosexual relationships and their alleged ability to “mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel.”
Zen condemned this argument, saying that a “homosexual couple, they are living in that continuous occasion of grievous sin and then they [Vatican officials] say this is something good which may grow, which may mature.”
“But this is nothing good, it is a serious sin, so that’s a heresy when you call a sin as something good,” said Zen. “That’s really terrible.”
Such comments echoed those which he made on his personal website on January 21, where he also took issue with Pope Francis’ dubia reply favorably comparing marriage to homosexual “sexual love.”
READ: Cardinal Zen warns of ‘error’ in Fiducia Supplicans, calls for Cdl. Fernández to resign
“This is an absolute subjective error. According to objective truth, that behavior is a grave sin and can never be good,” wrote Zen in January. “If the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is […] committing a heresy by claiming a serious sin as ‘good,’ then shouldn’t the Prefect resign or be dismissed?”
Zen’s January essay argued against Fiducia Supplicans’ claim that blessings to homosexual couples are given “out of pastoral love,” noting that Sacred Scripture teaches “that pastors are to protect the… sheep, heal the wounded, and lead back those who have gone astray.”
“The ‘statement’ seems to say that they came as a ‘pair’ and went back as a ‘pair’ after the blessing; doesn’t that mean that they can, at least for the time being, continue to live in the ‘wrong,’ i.e., sinful, way?”
While speaking to Arroyo last night, Zen drew from the style of Pope Benedict XVI who he stated was focussed on “just one point – the truth.”
“There is no right pastoral education if not based on the truths of the faith,” said Zen. “Now the faith for so many centuries is very clear that sodomy is a serious sin, so wherever we see misunderstanding we have to help people understand and to come back, not just to stay, not even for the moment.”
An ‘agenda’ from ‘the very beginning’
The 92-year-old cardinal stated that Fiducia Supplicans was not a document which emerged suddenly out of nowhere, but was a text based on consistent themes and well prepared documents issued by Pope Francis.
“I saw an agenda at the very beginning,” he said, “but now it’s clear what was the agenda.”
Zen pointed to some of the more controversial texts and events from the current pontificate, linking them to Fiducia Supplicans: “You should remember that the small footnote in Amoris laetitia, you remember the Viri probati [from the Amazon Synod], those were harbingers for those who had that agenda.”
With the latest Vatican text, Zen stated that “now it’s obvious; everybody can see clearly what was the agenda.”
He also decried Holy See officials, in a seeming allusion to Fernández and Pope Francis, suggesting that an orchestrated “agenda” is underway to alter the “whole Church.”
“They say ‘no we don’t have an agenda.’ Actually they put this LGBT at the bottom of the whole list… they moved the whole Church solemnly using a synod, just to have a chance to let people to accept an impossible thing,” said Zen.
The outspoken Hong Kong cardinal has consistently voiced his unwavering opposition to trends currently spreading through the Church, such as restrictions on the traditional Mass, the Synod on Synodality, and more recently the promotion of blessings of homosexual couples.
Over the summer of 2023, he was one of the five dubia cardinals who wrote to Pope Francis, presenting five urgent questions about possible attacks on the Church’s doctrines, including the possibility of homosexual blessings, the weight of teaching afforded to the synod, female ordination, and the necessity of repentance in sacramental Confession.
The dubia was publicly released on October 2, after the cardinals received an initial answer from Francis which was so “vague” that they re-issued their dubia to him. Zen suggested that the reply in question had been pre-prepared by synod organizers “to respond to the disturbers of their agenda.”